


Uneasy Confessions

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: For Family [15]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complicated Relationships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7537999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vader is on Tatooine, and Kenobi isn't running this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uneasy Confessions

Obi-Wan sat back against the rock outcropping, his fire small and banked against the winds as he savored his tea in the growing night. It would not be much longer. He'd felt the presence of his one-time student approach the planet, and it was growing closer all the time.

He'd spent the day in meditations, trying to glimpse the future.

Only the past would answer his call.

So be it, then, he had decided. Perhaps this was what had always been meant to happen. Perhaps he would have peace soon. Maybe he would not have to outlive any more people he had loved so unwisely.

++++

The discussion with Owen had, at least, been short. There had been anger in the other man, fear in the woman, but the promise to have communications with Luke and the offer of droids had done much to smooth the family over. Vader had spent longer standing at his mother's grave, silently asking her what he should do, than he had in talking to the man who had raised his son. 

Now, though. Now was for Kenobi. 

Kenobi's presence was blatant -- apparently he had no interest in hiding or running further -- if somehow muted and dull. His jaw ground as he tried to keep in mind what his Ahsoka, his _ner'vod_ had said... but it was so difficult not to sink purely into rage. Even with everything he and Ahsoka had done to untangle his mind, Kenobi -- 

\-- was Kenobi. 

He set the shuttle down lightly and left the cockpit, still slightly amazed by how much more lightly he could walk, now. How easy it was to use his limbs, and walked down on the accursed sands another time. 

++++

Outward appearances could be deceiving, Obi-Wan reminded himself. That lighter coloring of the armor that was far less imposing… the flare markings immediately reminding him of handmaidens crowded around a painted queen… all of it was merely outward appearance. Obi-Wan did not dare touch against the Force more than he had to, as this was what was left of the man he had once loved so deeply.

"Darth Vader," he said, refusing to rise, to reach for his lightsaber in defense against the mere presence of the man.

"...Vader, perhaps," the other man replied, watching Kenobi sit there with his hands away from his lightsaber, "but let us leave that title dead with the Emperor and the rest of them."

This was an old man sitting in front of Vader, and that baffled him for several long moments. How could Obi-Wan be old? "My _ner'vod_ asked me to listen. So I shall, if you will speak." 

So Ahsoka had bought him some clemency. "All I could say won't truly matter, I think." Obi-Wan sighed. "I did believe that separating the twins to be hidden was in their best interests. Padmé's children were at risk, at least from the Emperor." He did not say that Vader himself could have harmed them then as well.

"You always _did_ think you knew best!" he heard himself snap, his weight shifting, "even when you couldn't have been more wrong!

"...but about the children... _there_ you were right. About the danger, at least." 

Obi-Wan didn't want to spend his last day arguing with this man. "I tried to admit my mistakes to you before we fought. Will me saying it again even matter?"

He was tired. He had outlived all purpose. He would not be the reason Anakin slid into the Dark Side again, not when Ahsoka believed Anakin had found himself with reason to reach for the Light Side.

"Your reasons?" Vader asked, staring at him. He could feel the... exhaustion, defeat, apathy.... in his former Master (the very title made his lip curl inside the suit) and his temper flared higher. How _dare_ he be so -- so passive?! "Your reasons for _what_?!" He paused, lifting his right hand, leaning into the controlled regularity of his biomechanical lungs, and shook his head slightly. "Wait."

Obi-Wan watched as this man that he thought of as an enemy took the time to control himself, to find enough rein on his temper to keep from escalating the situation. That, more than anything, shook Obi-Wan to his core. 

"Vader… I failed the man you were. I knew that before I ever came to Mustafar," he admitted. "I was blind and incapable of being the true support you needed to see your full potential. And it left you vulnerable to one who only wished to exploit it."

"Yes," Vader agreed, nodding slightly as he watched Kenobi take a shaking breath. Somehow, hearing it... was not as wholly satisfying as he had thought it would be. "You were. Not that your beloved Code would let you do anything _but_ be blind.

"It's funny, almost, how similar the Sith and the Jedi actually are, when you get right to it..." Vader added.

"Both of us dealing in absolutes, denying all the things that made us sentient, emotive beings? Denying emotion when the Living Force touches all emotions available, good or bad?" Obi-Wan offered. "Oh yes, I've spent many days and nights contemplating where it all went wrong, perusing what records I have managed to acquire."

Wait, _what?_

Vader stared at Kenobi, feeling a little more the boy he had been than he had in decades, unable to convince his mind that he was getting full breaths, when the other man had surprised him so badly. Was _this_ the man that had yelled that only Sith dealt in absolutes at him as they fought their way across that hell-world? Was this the determined advocate of all things Jedi, Code and tenets and traditions alike? 

He'd expected a denial, somewhere between angry and furious, not... acceptance and even some agreement, and he felt uncertain. 

Obi-Wan sipped his tea, appreciating the cooler air that came with a desert night. This meeting was not going as he had envisioned it, but when had Anakin ever done anything to plan?

"For you, being a Jedi was a dream of a small child that did not fit the adult you came to be. For me, being a Jedi was all I would allow myself to be, because of how frequently I had nearly failed to attain it," Obi-Wan told him candidly. "Nearly too old to apprentice, disciplined repeatedly as an Initiate, even repudiated the Order when I was around Ahsoka's age when she first came to us. I was far too inflexible to change how I saw the Code -- because I needed it as my bedrock -- to be able to meet your demands and needs as someone from outside of it all.

"Yet, I could never bring myself to give you up, or let go of you in any fashion. Initially, it was my stubborn will because Qui-Gon had demanded it of me. Later… it was because of other reasons."

'How frequently I had nearly failed to attain it'... _what_?! Vader stared at Obi-Wan, knew it could not be seen, and flicked his incredulity into the Force between them. Obi-Wan had never even mentioned any of that, never admitted... Would it have done any good if he had? He wasn't sure. But the idea of Obi-Wan having been troubled, having had to struggle -- having nearly _left_ the Order?! -- to keep himself within the Code, when it had always seemed as though it came so _naturally_ to him... maybe it would have. Maybe not. 

From here and now, it was impossible to tell. 

Other reasons? For a moment, he heard a much younger voice screaming 'I loved you' and felt the agony of severed limbs and his lungs and throat burning, his rage and hate welling -- 

Obi-Wan set his tea down between them, and tipped his head back to view Vader more openly. "Your son is rash, headstrong, and wishing for adventure. Yet he is also loyal, kind-hearted, and ingenious in most of what he does. It has been, to a degree, a bit like watching you -- excuse me, watching Anakin grow up, without the outside pressures of the Order.

"And in doing so, I think I came face to face with how I most failed to help Anakin Skywalker not become Darth Vader." Obi-Wan's voice was low, revealing all of his fatigue with life. "I never truly let it show that I did believe, that I held pride in the accomplishments, that I knew how good Anakin Skywalker was. I feared the arrogance, and shied from doing what a teacher should, by praising the new skills mastered. And I never let it show how much I honestly did care." Obi-Wan paused then, letting Vader weigh it all.

What in all the hells of Mustafar and Malachor was _happening_ right now?! Vader took a few steps towards the rocks, finding one that he thought he could easily settle onto, staring at the man he had been **certain** he was going to kill or mutilate before he left this planet with his chest aching. 

Obi-Wan sitting there, admitting to the failings of the order, admitting to _his own_ failings... it didn't make the anger subside, but it did... change it, somehow. It made him willing to stay his hand, at least for the moment, and to actually talk. That last -- those very last words -- had him shaken, and Sith instinct pushed him to strike, ancient Jedi teachings told him to avoid... and all of his heart said 'reach out'. 

He'd never been good at listening to anyone else. "...you did?" 

Obi-Wan made himself look directly into the lenses of the mask. He felt his entire being at peace with the likelihood of death, of giving everything to the Force. It wasn't that difficult to let the truth be heard with death close at hand.

"Yes. I did. And… in some other world, it might have been a step toward more." Obi-Wan sighed softly. "All I truly wanted was for Anakin to have happiness. Even if it meant ignoring all the ways he did not conform to the Code, even if it meant trying desperately to hide an illicit relationship from the Council.

"But, I never stopped and wondered what Anakin truly wanted from me," Obi-Wan finished.

'Trying desperately to hide' -- 

\-- Vader shuddered, wanting to be able to look at him with his _own_ eyes, wanted to be able to _touch_ him, wanted not to be hearing any of this, because it hurt... 

But that last, that quiet admission... //I wanted you to be proud of me! To pay _attention!_!// 

They'd never had a solid Force connection, not for thought, not for more than a basic knowing of where each other were -- except in combat, where they'd worked like two halves of one incomparable whole, where they'd known everything about each other... and Vader realized only too late that the thought might as well have been a verbal scream. 

Obi-Wan jerked as if struck, and then his eyes closed, shoulders bowing in defeat. "I was right, then… and I would much prefer to not have been, my friend." When he looked up, his face was a study in pain, the eyes lanced with it. "I noticed you. I noticed you so much I could not half-breathe through so much of what you did! 

"I was too busy hoping to the Force and back that you came through it alive!" That last came out in a gasp of too-honest admission, before Obi-Wan forced himself to look down, to pick up his tea, and try to find his reserve.

Vader wanted something in his hands, something he could fix or take apart, as he listened to Obi-Wan's words, to the honesty there... brutal and true, and... he kept back the impulse to scream (to throw his rage and fury at so many wasted years, so much lost time, so much bloodshed and death and loss) only because he knew too well that he could kill and maim only with that. His hand (the one the Jedi had built) shook slightly as he looked across the little distance between them. " _That's_ why you were always so critical?

"Because you were -- " and Vader's words failed as he tried to find the right ones for the impossibility of Obi-Wan's admissions.

"Terrified. Of losing you. My dearest friend, my student, and… all that kept me living, so many times." Obi-Wan sighed softly. "Never was very good at telling people the important bits. And then they died, every one of them. Like the galaxy had a point to make and I kept missing it, until it was over and done."

Vader didn't intend to say his name, didn't intend to let his voice sound so -- _whatever_ that was -- and he most assuredly hadn't intended to reach for him with his shaking hand. "You never _did_ listen well..." 

"A trait we had in common at least," Obi-Wan answered that. He had looked up though, and that hand… he could no more not take it than cease to be. If he could have willed himself into the Force, he would have long since done so, after all. Except, there had been the responsibility of the boy. "Was it really just learning of your daughter that pulled you away from the Emperor?" he asked, fingers closing slowly around the gloved hand… trying not to think about the fact he had taken away this man's true ability to touch.

Vader could feel Obi-Wan's grip, relayed through the prosthetic, and he shunted all of his emotions off to the side to pay attention to the question. He'd given no word to _answer_ , only to listen... but... why shouldn't he. 

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Vader agreed, looking off across the dunes he hated, his thoughts going distant and dark. "You see... he told me, when I woke in that hell of armor, drugs, and pain you left me to, that I had murdered my Angel, and with her our child."

Obi-Wan's hand tightened violently on the fingers. "No!" He forced his voice down. "No… she was very much still alive when I fled to get her. I could feel a great Darkness closing in on us, and we got her on-board, the droids and I.

"At the medical facility, she did go into labor, but the med droid could find absolutely no reason for her to be as poorly as she was. Her life was fading, but she lived long enough to see and name both her son and her daughter." Obi-Wan swallowed hard. "And to insist that there was still good in you. She was, as always, correct, it seems."

Vader's breath half-shook, much as it could, as his vision went solid red as a TIE's display, a torrent of rage and hatred pouring into him like the waterfalls on Theed, like a Kaminoan tsunami hitting the city, filling him in an instant as those words told him what had happened to his wife, his angel, the best of everything that had ever happened to him. He felt Obi-Wan trying to get away from him and latched on, momentarily was grateful he didn't have the crushgaunt on, unable to actually think of anything but the need to slowly kill a man already dead at his hand. He couldn't, he knew that, and if he didn't do something with this rage... 

That sand didn't need to be sand; it could be glass. 

That would be less destructive than the last time he'd lost his temper here, at least. 

Obi-Wan's instincts to fall back were stopped by Vader holding onto him, and he sat there, bathed in that storm of rage, of Darkness. If he did survive this night, he was certain their former Padawan would kill him for bringing Vader back to such a point of anger and hatred.

"Please," he said, soft and filled with firm need, yet he couldn't articulate what it was he pleaded for. //Don't Fall again, stay in the Light, don't leave the children behind this way!//

Hearing Obi-Wan's voice only half-distracted him from the way he was using the Force, sliding the sand across and through itself until it melted. Once he had it started, was feeding his rage straight into the boiling sand, it was easy to keep going, throwing it in a red gleaming stream away from them. His body was responding to the use, to his fury, trying to sweat and half failing until he could do something like think again, and he squeezed the fingers around Obi-Wan's hand carefully. 

"I'm still here," Vader managed to say finally, mostly even, letting go of the glass to let nature take its course and cool it. "And no-one's dead, so, that's an improvement..." 

Obi-Wan had watched, had weathered the Force storm… and felt his heart beat with something akin to belief and possibly hope for the first time in almost twenty years. He looked at this stranger who had once been his best friend, his other half in so many ways, and he began to tremble.

In all the years, in all of his impulsive wishes to reach out and go tell Darth Vader the truth… why hadn't he tried at least once, if this was possible?

And then reality crashed in again, as he remembered just what he had done, how he had authored all the misery, had lost Anakin so spectacularly that his mere presence had made Anakin lash out at the one person who should have been inviolate.

"You have grown strong, both in ability and control."

Even the last of his fury and betrayed rage had not kept Vader so blind that he could not feel Obi-Wan trembling, hurting, and he looked just in time to see agonized defeat replace the touches of hope... and unease touched him, deep in his chest. He shifted a little, his other hand stretching to find a knee (despite the way that tugged at his reinforced spinal column), and replied simply, "Yes," to the comment on his powers. 

"Obi-Wan... what is it?" 

Obi-Wan drew in a shaking breath, then another, before finding an answer. "That the one time I will finally tell you how proud I am of you, may be the last time I ever see you, old friend." He forced himself to sit straighter, shifting enough to try and take the strain off of Vader's posture. "I am. Proud that you made the choice for Leia. That you defeated the Sith Master. That you came and looked for your son. That you have made peace with our padawan.

"All of it fills me with pride, just as you did all those years as my student, and then as my friend."

Vader could feel the truth of that. Clear and glassy as a Temple reflecting pool, Obi-Wan's eyes studying his mask as though he could see his face below it... and it was almost enough to drive him back to a knee. But he was already sitting, and he was _never_ kneeling again. It just... Obi-Wan's unqualified pride, the steadiness of his voice as he said those words...

He let the suit do his breathing for him, more than trying to do it himself, and held on. "I -- _why_ couldn't you ever have said anything when it mattered?! 

"As to 'the last time'... I've spent seventeen years planning how to make your death hurt you as much as living has hurt me. And now, with you here, at hand at long last... I think it would not be worth it." 

That made Obi-Wan bow his head some. "Only fair. I left you to misery all those years ago because I could not bring myself to make the choice for a fatal blow twice in less than a minute. Leaving me to live with my failures is much less severe, but still retribution," Obi-Wan said in a philosophical manner, addressing that last first. "Saying what I felt? A lifetime of holding back my real feelings is my only excuse."

He blinked once, behind the lenses, staring at Obi-Wan after, as an incongruity flickered in his mind. "A _fatal_ blow? That was textbook _mou kei_!"

"And if you had leaped half a meter lower, as I projected based on your obvious energy levels and injuries by that point?" Obi-Wan asked, wearily and regretfully all in one. "Though, I suppose then I would have been looking over my shoulder for you anyway, given Maul." He'd aimed for a complete bisection, to end it swiftly, knowing the angle was wrong for decapitation.

"...oh," Vader murmured, softly, hearing that weary regret, the honest pain, and considering the angles of that fight. Yes, if he'd been lower, that upward slash would have taken his chest, not -- 

\-- "but you watched. me. burn..." 

"No… I ran like a coward from the choice of killing you, in hopes of saving the woman you loved and the child she carried," Obi-Wan told him, jaw going tight. "I had to do that much, and I could feel the Force fighting death to keep you alive. If I had managed to make that next blow, would it have been enough? Or would I have had to strike again? Would I make it to Padmé before that Dark Presence I felt got to her? If it was your Master, and I had stayed to kill you… he would have her, have your child… and then you would hate me even more, even from both of us being in the Force!"

Vader listened, almost despite himself, and considered those words. "...I could still feel you... I couldn't see, but it... you were _there_ , and I -- " 

Had that, too, been illusion? Had --

"Anakin -- no, forgive me. Vader, do you think I could risk losing your wife and child, when I had irrevocably lost you? If so, then I do not have words to convince you of how badly I did fail you." Obi-Wan swallowed hard. "I loved you. The minute I saw you would not listen to me, it did not matter which of us survived the fight.

"I was already dead."

Vader's lip curled behind the mask, wanting to snap about Obi-Wan clinging to the Code, about his riding him every day of his _life_ as a Jedi about his attachments -- but the pure agony in his one-time Master, the brother of his heart, his dearest flesh-and-blood friend... that stopped the words in his throat. 

"I -- Obi-Wan?" Kriff, but his voice was shaking. 

Obi-Wan sighed and stood, unable to sit still any longer, and that… that, he knew betrayed how unnerved he was. Always it had been Anakin to pace, to fret. Yet here he was, on his feet, moving.

"I lost my first love, without knowing what it was, on a world called Melida/Daan. There was Siri. There was Satine." He closed his eyes against the pain of litany of the names. "There was my Master, who never even knew, or so I'd thought. My Commander, lost through no fault of his own. And then you.

"All lost to me, and my adherence to the Code, always in the way!" They'd all been different loves of different levels, but they'd all claimed pieces of him that he could never recover, being incapable of turning it into the Force as he was meant to do. "I clung to the Code, yes, old friend. Because every time I broke it, someone else paid the price!"

Vader rose, slowly, and followed his brother, his right hand sliding around from back to hip, shaking his head -- much as he could manage that gesture now -- as that almost Mando'a litany ran down his nerves. The first two, those he had had no idea of. Satine had been entertaining to tease Obi-Wan over... he hadn't known it was so terribly true. 

"You're out of your mind if you think Master Qui-Gon didn't know, or didn't love you," he told the back of his brother's head. That Obi-Wan had lost Cody and himself almost in the same moment... "And thank you. For saving her -- our -- children." 

Obi-Wan turned to face him again, and nodded. "Take care of them. Love them. Don't let them bind themselves as we all did," he asked. He did know, now, that Qui-Gon had loved him. It had not helped him in the slightest, that his very plan to remain with his Master as long as possible had kept him from being at a point where Qui-Gon would let his own feelings show.

"I _won't_ ," Vader agreed, full-voiced and sharp on that last, as he looked at the sheen of unshed tears in his brother's eyes. "Working out what to teach them, for their own sakes, is going to be... difficult... but **that** part of the Order's teachings is dying. All it did was cripple all of us. 

"Come with us?" 

Obi-Wan could not help but _stare_ at his old friend and try to fathom that those words were real. "If I am actually still on Mortis, and all of this has been--" After all he had done to Anakin, that Vader would even think to offer such? It made no sense. "You'd come to regret it," he said, weakly fighting the pull that was on him. "We'd wind up arguing, and that could be terrible."

Vader hissed at the mention of Mortis, using a Noghri profanity he'd become fond of the sound of -- they did not know how good his hearing truly was, which came in useful on occasion -- over the years. "So it could," he agreed, vaguely startled by the surprise. Of all men, all beings, Obi-Wan should have been the least surprised in the galaxy. Had he -- had Anakin Skywalker -- ever been capable of letting go of those he loved? "But Luke seems fond of you. 

"And that you meant to kill me, left to save my Angel and her children... those matter to me." 

Obi-Wan did not recognize that language, but felt the meaning in the wave of heat from Vader. He then stepped a little closer, holding his hand out again to the other man. "Listen to me when I ask you if a technique is really suitable to either of them, and I will listen to you when you question what I can offer?" 

If he put it on those terms, that it was for the children, maybe Obi-Wan could live with himself for even considering this. Maybe he could learn how to live properly, if he and Anakin -- Vader -- were united once more in a common mission.

"...I did tell her I would listen," Vader replied, fingers now wrapping back around that outstretched hand. "Perhaps between ex-Sith, ex-Jedi, and Jedi actually starting to _think_ , we'll actually manage to kick together a system that isn't broken. 

"Expect some sharp questions from my daughter, though." 

_That_ hadn't been deliberate. Vader hadn't been letting himself really think of either of the twins as 'his'. They were Padmé's children, not... not _his_. 

"I look forward to getting to know her, and to know Luke better, instead of merely watching from afar," Obi-Wan said, stepping fully to Vader's side. If this should end in tragedy, at least there would be truth between them now.


End file.
